Dining out should be a luxury, but now and then, you come across a restaurant that gives off some pretty serious red flags. Well, Redditor TeachBS asked, “What is something that is an automatic ‘I am not eating here, we need to leave’ at a restaurant?” Plus, I’ve included some responses from members of the BuzzFeed Community about their restaurant deal-breakers.
1.
“Besides being filthy or having rude service, blaring loud music and strange lighting will make me immediately turn around and leave. I just want to eat my meal peacefully or have a nice conversation with someone.”
2.
“If I go to a Mexican or Tex-Mex spot with terrible chips and salsa, I just pack it up and leave. Nothing will get better after this rough start.”
3.
“An over-abundance of televisions. TVs in sports bars are fine, but if I’m going to a restaurant, I don’t want to be surrounded by them.”
—CarrieFisherStevens
4.
“Too many items on the menu. It’s a sign that a restaurant probably uses all frozen food. Nothing against frozen food. It’s ideal for some things. Some things, not all things.”
5.
“The smell of a dirty grease trap. After you’ve worked in a kitchen for a while, you recognize it instantly. It’s an awful smell, and if a place isn’t getting it regularly serviced, the rest of the operation is probably terrible too.”
—BakedMitten
6.
“If the cook walks out of the bathroom wearing his apron.”
7.
“When they keep the lights dimmed so low, you can’t see the menu. I’ve been to a few places like this, and the food is always bad. That restaurant is probably dark for a reason…”
8.
“Restaurants without free WiFi that have QR code-only menus.”
9.
“You see someone who handles the food while wearing gloves, but he uses those gloved hands to handle money, open doors, touch their face, etc… Or worse, someone who handles food with bare hands while there are open wounds or bandaids. I’ve seen it. Immediate nope for me.”
—JessCeceSchmidtNick
10.
“If the server isn’t helpful or knowledgeable when my son goes out and orders something gluten-free. On the contrary, if the server starts asking questions about whether it’s allergy-related or preference, I know it will be a good experience. Maybe not great food, but I know the server understands allergies, and the restaurant takes them seriously.”
11.
“No soap in the bathroom, and no hint that it just ran out. For example, there is no dispenser on the wall and no empty container on the sink.”
12.
“When you cook fish, your kitchen should smell more like the beach than fish. Fish that smells like fish has been sitting all day on a bed of ice; when you cook fish and the place stinks, it’s from a layer of bacteria that cooks along with the fish, making it stink. Fresh-caught and well-taken care of seafood does not give off this odor. So, with that in mind, if a seafood restaurant stinks like fish, keep walking.”
13.
“When you go in and see most of the guests have dirty plates on their tables and are looking around for a server. Add empty tables still piled with plates; you know the place is incredibly short-staffed. Time to bail out.”
14.
“If you walk in and the floor is sticky, better walk right back out.”
—Morythecat
15.
“If a Middle Eastern restaurant serves you bad hummus, then for sure everything else will suck too.”
16.
“When the workers look at you like you ruined their good time, and now they gotta actually work.”
—Human-Bit-1427
17.
“Don’t go in if you can smell the fry oil from the street. There’s a chain restaurant less than a mile from my house. I can smell their old cooking oil just driving near it. I don’t know how long they use it before they change it, and I don’t intend to ever find out.”
18.
“We went to a Thai restaurant and saw a roach crawl across the host stand before anyone even came to seat us. If the roaches have taken over the front of the house, imagine what the kitchen must be like. Left immediately.”
19.
“No prices listed on the menu. I saw a food truck like that. I walked away. Food trucks used to be cheap, and now they are often more expensive than brick and mortar.”
—DerFuhrersStache
20.
“It’s mostly empty, but the staff is surprised and confused about your presence. It’s a hint that selling food isn’t their main business.”
—South_Chocolate986
21.
“Any place where the tables are packed so closely together, you might as well just sit with the strangers next to you.”
22.
“Sit-down restaurants that don’t take reservations. I genuinely don’t understand why a sit-down establishment wouldn’t accept them. There’s a place near me that we love but eat at only rarely because I refuse to wait 30 minutes to just sit down. Why can’t you organize!? It’s so much easier for everyone involved, especially when it’s online and requires little manpower. I don’t get it.”
Do you have one to add? What is a red flag that signals a terrible restaurant? Or, on the contrary, what is a green flag that suggests a restaurant might be great? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form.
